Recommended Reading for JD 2455264.5

Warning: Offsite links are not safe spaces. Articles and comments in the links may contain ableist, sexist, and other -ist language and ideas of varying intensity. Opinions expressed in the articles may not reflect the opinions held by the compiler of the post. I attempt to provide extra warnings for material like extreme violence/rape; however, your triggers/issues may vary, so please read with care.

The theme of our issue of the disability blog carnival is the following: breaking down stereotypes. We posed the following question: if you could break down one single stereotype, which would it be and why?

Whether or not one is employed is a standard part of the social profile that new doctors seem to want to know — particularly in my case, since I don’t have a clear single diagnosis. “Work” for a doctor seems to serve as a bright line between genuinely disabled and neurotic, psychosomatizer. For far too many within the medical system, work serves as a talisman between a healthy coper and a drag on the medical and welfare systems.

Wheelchair users are facing a lengthy diversion if plans for a footbridge over a railway line go ahead. Network Rail wants to remove level crossings at Dawdon as part of a scheme to upgrade signals along the East Durham coast. Crossing the tracks on foot near Princess Road and at the town’s station would be stopped once footbridges are installed.[…]

Coun Bob Arthur, who represents the Dawdon ward on Durham County Council, said: “There is growing concern from people and they have been on to me about this because the bridge would not be suitable for wheelchairs and pushchairs.

The Transportation Security Administration on Friday announced nine more U.S. airports that will receive body-scanning technology, as the U.S. heightens its effort to detect hidden explosives and contraband amid a threat highlighted by an attempted bombing on Christmas Day.

These new “backscatter” type machines are different — and one would hope improved — from the existing “millimeter wave” types already being used in various spots around the country. Some of you might remember the story from a few weeks back of a millimeter wave machine in Denver being set off by an artificial breast.

Two women were stopped from boarding a plane at Manchester Airport after refusing to undergo a full body scan. The passengers were due to fly to Islamabad on 19 February when they were selected at random to go through the new scanning machine. […] The women were warned they were legally required to go through the scanner, after being chosen at random, or they would not be allowed to fly, an airport spokesman said.

Surprisingly, a pair of otherwise civil-libertarian friends shrugged when they heard this rant. “I’m not with you on this one,” they said. They cited the impersonality and brevity and
disposability of the images. (I’m skeptical of the proposition that the government will
collect information and throw it away: since when?) They reduced me to inarticulate dudgeon, because I couldn’t imagine how they could fail to share a response I felt so viscerally.

And then I realized: they’re men. They haven’t spent their entire lives bracing themselves
against precisely the violation of being stripped naked by a stranger. As far back as grammar
school, it was accepted practice in my middle-class neighborhood for a boy to threaten to grab a girl walking home and strip her. I don’t know if this was ever actually done, but the mere threat was effective in keeping girls frightened and under control. And, as Susan Brownmiller established, the threat of rape-including the notion if not the actuality of nakedness-is the pervasive device by which men keep women in line.

As much as having naked images of their bodies taken and viewed by strangers may be an upsetting idea to many Muslim women, why focus only on us? Or religious groups in general (The Jewish Daily Forward’s article claims that the airport scanners run “afoul of Jewish law.”)? The American Civil Liberties Union has issued a statement against the scanners that does not single out any specific religious group or gender. It seems likely many people would be equally offended by both the breach of personal privacy and the indignity of being constantly suspect while traveling or merely going about their business—why should the media assume that Muslim women are the only ones who will have ethical, ideological, or personal issues about the airport body scanners?